BEFORE YOU THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, MAKE SURE YOU KNOW 
WHAT'S OUT THERE

When our house was being built, we used to drive out in the evenings to see what progress had been made. It is a post and beam home––all wood beams, glass, and stone. There were no interior walls yet, so we’d put a ladder up to the second level, climb up and look at the beautiful yellow pine everywhere.

One evening we were peering up at the tongue-and-groove ceilings two-and-a-half stories up, and we both came to the same conclusion: lose the walls. Why cover up all this wood? We’d tell the contractor to just skip the interior walls entirely. There's just the two of us. We could have a wide open house

We can sit in our first floor living room and look up over the rail at our bedroom and even farther up at another little loft with my writing desk, keyboard, and my dad’s rocking chair. We can throw dirty dishrags up over the balcony toward the laundry area. We can drop a sweater down for whoever is cold. Strings of Christmas lights start 30 feet up in the tiny sky loft and swing all the way down through the bedroom and farther down to the living and dining rooms. It is gorgeous.

On the other hand, the house does present some cleaning challenges. And this is not a small thing in the country. In town, we’d have some faint footprints on the floor from 3 dogs who went in and out all day. Here, the land is clay; if it’s wet outside, you get taller and taller as you walk. Our four feet and the dogs’ eight paws bring in clods and smears of nasty grey clay. In town, we cleaned the windows a couple of times a year with a few paper towels. Out here, when the farmer plows the field south of us, we have black out conditions that would have made Winston Churchill proud. And the grain dust and aerosolized soil blows in through every crevice, coating everything.

I did get one of those 15-foot extension poles to attack the beams three stories up. Sadly, no matter how strong the steel or how much you pay for the industrial kind of pole, when it gets that long, it will bend. And whip around banging into things because it’s also very heavy and you cannot control it. A little dust rag on the end of a steel pole is no match for a towering combine that throws up a rooster tail of dirt or a biplane that sprays god-knows-what that drifts our way.

The one thing I have not conquered is the stone fireplace. It sits in the center of our house, rising through all the “rooms.” And it is huge. 32-feet tall, about 12-feet wide and 4-feet deep. Remember Tennessee Ernie Ford? 16 tons? That’s what we got. 16 tons of Wisconsin fieldstone crafted into a beautiful structure. And you’ve no doubt heard that Iowa has lost its precious topsoil? I know where it is. It’s all on that fireplace.  The rocks stick out all over creating hundreds of little shelves. No normal dusting device can handle it. The stones are rough, so if you use the lambs wool or feather dusters (duct taped onto the giant handle device), bits of feather or fabric cling to the stone. That does not look better than dust. Truthfully, others probably can’t see the dust, but I know it’s there. Blow on the fireplace. You’ll see.

One day I was determined to give it a really good dusting, just for once. Then it came to me. It would take a little sacrifice because at first, the dust situation might get a bit worse before it got better. I went to the garage to get my favorite appliance. I have a nice little leaf blower. Electric. Quiet. I thought it was worth a try.

I took the leaf blower up to the second floor––our bedroom in the balcony. I plugged in a long orange extension cord, aimed the blower at the top of the chimney far above me and turned that baby on at the “Hi” setting. Out here in the boonies, there’s no room for hesitation. One must take action.

Clearly, I had underestimated the power of the leaf blower when it is used in a contained space. I believe they should put that information on the box. In my defense, the immense cloud of dust that exploded throughout the second level of our home impeded my view of the events that took place over the next few minutes so I could not react effectively. Furthermore––and I know you’re wondering––no, I could not simply turn it off. I was holding one hand over my eyes and nose and was blinded by dust so I had to hold the blower with just one hand. I couldn’t let go to find the on-off button. I couldn’t unplug it because I had used a 30 ft. extension cord and pulling on that did no good. The location of the outlet was but a distant memory. One hand was not enough hands, so the leaf blower was whirling around in all directions.

It ended in about a minute. When I could open my scratched and burning eyes just a slit, and when the dust began to thin, I was able to assess the situation.

This technique had not only freed up all the dirt from 6 months of plowing and harvesting, it had done a pretty fair job of pruning our ficus tree, too. Dead leaves were on all 3 levels of our home. Furthermore, I could look over the balcony and see my husband’s underwear in the dining room and one of my bras draped over a lamp in the living room. Frames on the walls were still rocking back and forth. I do have to say, if you’re one of those people who has a messy desk, this really is the solution. All of my papers, pens, and small books were strewn throughout the house, and my desk was clean as a whistle.

There really was much less dirt on the fireplace, but every piece of furniture, the walls, the insides of windows, the plants, the terrified dogs, me––everything was now breaded in dust.

Not to make excuses, but people in such stressful circumstances sometimes make even more bad decisions. Here was my reasoning as I decided on my next move: can this get any worse? So I opened the double doors in our living room and tried to blow everything out onto the deck. I aimed at the doors, but everything simply became airborne once again. This time, when the dust settled, there stood my husband. Of course, I had not heard his car pull up. He was in the hall, immobilized, simply looking at me.

“Would you want a boring wife?” I asked. For a fleeting moment, for the first time ever, I think I saw him consider that possibility.